Beyond the Trump-Musk fallout?
— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) June 6, 2025
At first impression, it makes no sense that Musk would start firing away at the (admittedly imperfect) budget bill, or escalate to DefCon 1, by tweeting nonsense about impeachment, the Epstein files, or disengaging his space efforts from the U.S.…
Assuming that Trump is serious, wait until he hears that there's no Golden Dome or Mars without SpaceX.
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) June 5, 2025
[Saturday-evening update]
Sorry about the formatting issues. I’m trying to get used to the WordPress update, which munged everything up in terms of how I post. Among other things, it made it a lot more effort to insert HTML.
“Assuming that Trump is serious, wait until he hears that there’s no Golden Dome or Mars without SpaceX.”
People still haven’t learned.
Trump is, of course, a big fat idiot that is a billionaire and was elected President two, maybe three, times despite attempts to put him in jail for a thousand years. No one in politics has faced the challenges that Trump has. He doesn’t know everything about everything, but he assuredly knows the basics of NASA.
Or it is all just dumb luck, the luck of the dumb. Anyone could do it.
Or it is all just dumb luck, the luck of the dumb. Anyone could do it.
Biden in some degree of senility could do it. That lowers the bar a little.
My view is that a rift between Trump and Musk was inevitable.
I find Trump’s revealed collaboration with Palantir more alarming. The source story in the NYT is paywalled, but it is alleged that the administration is contracting Palantir to construct a unified database for all US citizens.
I don’t think Biden “did it” at all. He was a puppet. The Puppeteers did it.
And you don’t believe someone who was as leveraged as Donald “bankrupt a casino” Trump isn’t a puppet?
Who is he a puppet of?
The Democrats hate him. The Republicans hate him. His policies are all bad for Russia.
Are you expressing the current Democrat attack that the Jews control him?
The casino bankruptcies occurred decades ago and had the effect of deleveraging Trump. Nor is he the only Atlantic City casino operator to go broke there. They pretty much all did. Proliferating Indian casinos at the low end and a resurgent Las Vegas at the high end whipsawed Atlantic City into near oblivion as a casino-resort destination. None of the handful of casinos still operating there are doing so under their original ownership.
Trump certainly hasn’t been anywhere near as leveraged since. The majority of his new businesses in more recent times have been acquisitions and rebrandings of extant properties that were going concerns and a plethora of licensing deals for others to sell things using his name.
So I’ll echo Wodun – of whom or what is Trump supposed to be a puppet?
Yup, and since we know cheating too place in 2020, he probably had a lot of illegal help.
No one listed Biden puppet master. Funny Wodun you left out one of his biggest pay masters , he in fact took a half billion dollar plane from them as compensation.
His policies are all bad for Russia???, you on the same stuff Elon on? So cutting off intelligence and military supplies to Ukraine was bad for Russia? All the concessions we gave before even starting peace talks with Russia. Cutting funds to US soft power and withdrawing from allies? Removing people from our military cause what they do in their personal time. How exactly were those bad for Russia?
You need to lay off the MSNBCNN crack pipe. The fact that we still don’t know who the Wizard of Oz was behind the curtain of the Biden residency doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. There manifestly was – probably an entire committee. Biden has been about as mentally functional as a rutabaga going back to well before 2020.
The Qatari airplane is – idiotic partisan US left-wing commentary notwithstanding – not a personal gift to Trump but a gift to the United States. Assuming the deal actually goes through, by the time all of the conversion work needed to make it into an Air Force One is complete there is only a modest chance Trump will ever get to fly in it before leaving office.
Given the medieval mentalities of the rulers of Gulf petro-kingdoms and the degree to which they need the US vastly more than the US needs them, one could make a decent case that the airplane is a Qatari offer of “tribute” in the ancient imperial sense.
The same can be said, at least in part, of the $5 trillion in US-destined investment capital promised by the Gulf petro-kingdoms on the same Trump tour that garnered the plane offer. But it’s also an investment and a diversification play away from petroleum which is declining in long-term importance. The kings and sheiks need to transition to a different long-term income stream with which to support their mostly trustifarian native populations. And they’re all young enough to know they will still be around – barring assassination – when the oil money dwindles.
Anent Ukraine you really should keep up better. The cut-off of Ukraine had about the same half-life as the current mutual social media pissing match between Trump and ex-bestie Elon Musk seems likely to have. Trump appears to have figured out, based on subsequent Russian behavior, that his long-time notions that Putin was actually his good buddy and that the Ukrainians were the bad guys in the current war were twaddle.
Trump is actually educable – unlike Democrats – and that is probably, in large part, a product of Trump being neither an intellectual nor an ideologue.
In any case, support for Ukraine has been back on for awhile now and with even fewer restrictions than before.
Trump will never publicly acknowledge having been wrong but that’s okay. Doing the right thing even unaccompanied by any fanfare at all is what counts.
Engineer is flailing with these debunked accusations the same way the MSM is flailing.
“Trump is, of course, a big fat idiot that is a billionaire and was elected President two, maybe three, times despite attempts to put him in jail for a thousand years”
You forget to mention at least two attempt(s) to assassinate (murder) him. As for whether he is an idiot; he does tend to speak off the cuff sometimes especially when provoked. Don’t read too much into it. Waiting to see what happens with his “impoundment” argument. Don’t think that is settled yet; the constitutionality of the Nixon era statute. Also sure he can “impound” funds if the DOJ says there is evidence of fraud/malfeasance etc. After all if he pays out when there is evidence of some kind of grif he would be guilty of facilitating a crime if he paid it.
Ask for Musk don’t know what provoked his tirade against Trump
It’s a deepfake. Possibly to draw out some maleficent actor. If Trump were on the Epstein lists, that would have been leaked when he came down the elevator in 2016. And if Trump cancels Space-X contracts, NASA is dead in the water, given how often BO or ULA can launch.
Deorbit the ISS? Sure! It’s coming down.
Like various pundits, I do think this feud seems weird, because what exactly, if anything, is coming out that we didn’t already know?
As wodun noted previously, the EV credits were announced along time ago to be going away and really, I wonder how many people were eligible for them anyway. Not all Tesla models were eligible under the previous administration. I don’t take seriously that Musk was mad about it, but that’s what Trump says.
Many say Musk went nuclear by claiming Trump is in the Epstein files. Well, two things, how would Musk know what is in the FBI Epstein files? Also, we all know Trump had a history with Epstein and that it is documented in police records that actually make Trump look like the first person to throw Epstein out for his behavior with young women. I would expect the FBI to have those police records in their Epstein files, plus all the previous times Trump met with Epstein long before anyone knew what was going on.
I guess a third item as noted all over, if the FBI had anything incrementing on Trump with Epstein, surely, they would have released it years ago? Well maybe, or maybe not. Not sure what they could release only about Donald Trump and absolutely nobody else. Anyway, this nuclear option seems a real dud.
The idea of cutting Musk’s contracts with the government was noted by Eric Berger, and again here by Rand. Trump loses more than Musk by going that route. And it is a common hack thing to claim Musk gets his money from the government; when reality the government has gotten much more from Musk at a cheaper cost than anywhere else.
So other than a few, “we aren’t speaking” comments; nothing of this feud seems to be consequential. I’ve seen some suggest this is like pro wrestling, which considering Linda McMahon is in Trump’s cabinet; perhaps this is. Trump has done these skits before, and Musk knows how they work. Could this all be a con job of two heavy weights arguing in public while laughing in the locker room? If so, what is the game?
Whatever it is; it is a distraction. Let’s hope it is being used wisely.
The consequential part is the pulled nomination of Jared Isaacman.
Yeah, I noted in the Blue Origin speaks thread yesterday that I thought that is what set Musk off. My own opinion for the last decade is that everything Musk does is about getting to Mars. Even his involvement with Trump is about streamlining government, so that he can get his permits going, or as an Ayn Rand character might say “get it out of my way”. Losing Isaacman and not getting a streamline government is a setback. The EV credits are not the issue.
i would think the main concern was a stream lined NASA
NASA is one of the least of his concerns – there are many more government departments that can impact SpaceX negatively.
FCC, FAA, EPA, DOD, State just a few of them.
The other agencies are a bigger threat, but NASA is a good enough vehicle to work through those other agencies. If NASA can do it, why not SpaceX? If SpaceX can’t do it, are you willing to block NASA?
Yeah, I think Musk is pursuing his interests and sometimes that will align with the right but Musk isn’t conservative.
Is he a free speech guy? Maybe but he bought Twitter for the same reason Bezos bought the Washington Post, to influence the most powerful people in the world and the rabble.
Dealing with the debt is such a critical problem that it shouldn’t be a left/right issue. Whatever Musk’s views on politics, he sees it as the civilizational threat it is. The fighting doesn’t help solve any problems, probably not even Musk’s reputational ones, and certainly wont convince Democrats or Republicans in congress to cut spending.
“Could this all be a con job of two heavy weights arguing in public while laughing in the locker room? If so, what is the game?”
I’ve been pondering that very question ever since this started.
Theoretically, let’s say that both of them want to cut the budget. Trump, though, had to back a lot of stuff in the bill to get it passed. He’s also hemmed in by campaign promises on some of the tax cuts (No tax on tips, social security, or overtime). There’s also the very costly rise of the SALT cap, as demanded by a handful of Republicans in the House to get this passed.
So, will the Senate cut some stuff from the bill? Pre-feud, probably not. Now? Maybe – the SALT cap especially, as zero R senators are from affected states (Blue states). Musk’s blow-up gives them cover to make some cuts, plus puts pressure on R house members not to torpedo the changes. Trump can’t do this himself (It’s seen as his bill) but the feud changes the dynamics, politically.
As for Musk, he has the additional motive that a public split with Trump likely solves his problem with the left attacking Tesla dealerships and Teslas in general.
My above theory is, admittedly, very thin. The alternative, though, is that Musk and Trump are putting their egos above the good of the country, and acting like 3rd graders.
As for the Epstein “bomb”, yes, Democrats (Biden’s DOJ certainly had access) could have very easily revealed anything damaging against Trump, and Trump alone. They’d have simply leaked it. I find it utterly implausible that they wouldn’t, were there anything at all salacious there. I’m also of the opinion that Elon Musk is many things, but stupid ain’t one of ’em; he surely knows this. Just as he surely knows that that some of what he’s complaining about not being in the bill cannot be in the bill because it’s a reconciliation bill, and those do have rules.
As for Trump’s claim regarding Musk being upset about EV mandates and credits being cut, um, would this be the same Elon Musk who’s been calling for exactly that for well over a year, including on camera?
Trump, it’s worth noting, was defacto publicly called a liar during this feud, by a guy named Donald Trump; he’s claiming that he asked Musk to leave, which just happens to be a direct contradiction of what he said a week ago.
The Trump/Musk partnership was a good thing for America, the same America both of them claim to value above all else.
So, either this whole mess is some sort of political theater, or they both seriously need to grow up.
I’m not really sure which it is, but I’m not banking on this being “an op”. It doesn’t make sense. It seems almost incredibly childish. But the egos involved doesn’t rule out it being real.
However, I can rationalize it being a stunt. Nothing is really the “nuclear” stuff some claim. It is rather mundane actually. Even Musk’s Trump quoting is just a reminder of what the voters wanted.
All the same, I’m not happy about witnessing it.
Some of it is pretty over the top. Makes me wonder how they act in private, like are they always busting each other’s balls?
Saw a post-fight clip of Trump saying a lot of nice things about Musk and some x posts with Musk saying some nice things about Trump. Hopefully, they will come to an understanding.
Here is a 4d chess possibility: Elon was getting profressionally killed for his association with Trump. Elon had to leave the government, his time was up. As a parting gift, his friend Trump offers to have a raucous breakup, as it is easy to predict that if Elon says something mean about Trump the left will instantly forgive him and re-institute him as a paragon of virtue. Trump has thick skin, he doesn’t care what is said – and by prior arrangement, Elon says something sensational, headline catching, but eventually easily disproven.
Elon can go back to his strengths, saving society from itself through manufacture. Trump racks up another win making the media look stupid when the truth about the Epstein files comes out. And DOGE continues unabated. Win-win-win.
trump doesn’t have a thick skin he takes issue with anyone looks sideways at him
As often as he gets into fights, he also forgives just as easily.
It is like the old saying of get in a fight then go get a beer together, only Trump doesn’t drink.
Very much agreed about being unhappy witnessing it; I absolutely am, real or not.
As for an op making sense… here’s another possible motive; Tesla. It has a lot of production capacity in China, and is thus vulnerable to China. And Trump’s negotiating with China. Using Tesla as leverage would be expected for China, but, with an ostensible Musk/Trump feud, Trump can merely laugh in their faces on that one. Combine that with getting the left to stop their violence against Tesla here, and getting the “Big, beautiful bill” improved, and I think that’s motive. Does motive mean it’s real? Nope, but it does mean I think it’s possible this is an op by both Musk and Trump.
The flip side is that your point about their egos is exceedingly valid; with egos like those two have, it’s all too plausible that this is real. I’ve seen this sort of thing in person with others; the two biggest egos in the group, once friends, suddenly in a rapidly-escalating feud shouting ever more childish insults at each other. They even came to blows, until the teacher intervened. (This was in 3rd grade).
The only thing you’ve said that I disagree with is this; “It seems almost incredibly childish.”. If you hadn’t included the word “almost”, I’d agree in full. 🙂
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14787485/sergio-gor-elon-musk-donald-trump-fued.html
FWIW this article states that it was the axing of Jared Isaacman as NASA that was the proximate catalyst for the blowup. Sad all around.
Not sure how much it’s worth. I think it was Elon’s vociferous criticism of the BBB.
Can’t trust the media. They are always trying to manipulate their audience, who aren’t the general public.
This Sergio guy is one of the few Trump employees that have lasted. The left would probably like to take him out.
The White House adviser who fueled the Trump-Musk NASA feud
“Musk and Gor had a tense relationship that surfaced in March during a heated Cabinet meeting in which Musk got into an argument with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, The New York Times reported at the time.”
“Sergio let it be known he didn’t like Musk’s attitude … and he didn’t like getting called out [by Musk] in front of the Cabinet,” said one White House official who attended the meeting.”
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/06/trump-musk-feud-nasa-white-house-aide
Just saw Musk tweet about decommissioning Dragon. I can believe Musk would do it. It would put NASA and Trump in a bind. The only option to keep ISS flying would be to send money to Russia. No ISS, that’s a quick cut to NASA’s budget. Musk stated back in February that he thought ISS should end.
If this is a real fight, Trump’s Space Force and Golden Dome are going to have problems.
I’m an Occam’s Razor man. For that reason, I reject all notional “4-D chess” explanations. I think the Trump-Musk rupture is pretty much what it seems to be – Trump, at the end of the day, choosing to side with one of his self-important minor courtiers over Elon. Trump was wrong to make such a choice, but he’s been wrong about other things of rather greater consequence before – notably his initial takes on Putin, Zelenskyy and the Russo-Ukraine War.
Both Trump and Musk are prickly and sometimes mercurial – Trump notably more so than Musk. But this dust-up seems likely to resemble the radiation decay curve of the more ferocious isotopes in nuclear reactor waste – the more initially intense, the shorter the half-life.
There are people – notably SecDef Hegseth and Gen. Guetlein – who can explain how ending all of SpaceX’s government contracts would be utterly disastrous for DoD while inflicting little or no damage to SpaceX. Outside of DoD there would also be the not-so-trivial matters of effectively ceding ISS to the Russians while also dooming it to an uncontrolled re-entry at some future point and ceding the latter-day “Moon Race” to the PRC.
Trump appears to have quietly done a 180 on his previous views anent Russia and Ukraine even given that sticking with his initial mistaken take would have had far smaller deleterious consequences for the US than would his current intemperate notion about SpaceX contract cancellations. I expect this particular bit of reflexive idiocy to suffer the same sort of quiet burial as his former Russia-Ukraine policy. It will simply go away and never be spoken of again.
I concur generally and specifically that Trump has a bit more to lose with his threats than Musk. Trump may be the “Art of the Deal”, but Musk has the better side of it. The only thing Trump can do to hurt Musk is try to stop Starship, which would hurt Musk’s timeline, or find some stupid way to treat Musk as a criminal. Both would just give incentive for Musk to relocate to a country that would like his business.
Occam’s Razor says that Trump knows what SpaceX does for the government and that sometimes an insult is just an insult.
Trump has spent a lot of time with Musk and he has praised both Musk and SpaceX for their contributions.
Trump’s Ukraine policy is still in place, work toward ending the war. Neither party is tired of suffering yet and are not rational actors. The longer it goes on, the greater the risk that is spreads or that the overton window shifts in directions that would be bad.
Trump has always had a tendency to shoot from the hip rather than take careful aim. One hopes that Hegseth, Guetlein and Scolese – and maybe even Petro – can stage a wee intervention if Trump actually seems bent on cancelling SpaceX contracts after a modest cooling off interval. There are things they would need to ‘splain to the Orange Man in that case.
The public-facing Trump policy of trying to end the Russo-Ukraine war is still in place, but there doesn’t seem much juice or real expectation behind it these days. Meanwhile, the aid is all back on and with effectively no restrictions on use.
Ukraine is an entirely rational actor. Self-defense is always rational and Ukraine has been hurting Russia a lot more than Russia has been hurting Ukraine – and not just in the last few days.
The self-destructive aggression of Russia is the irrational aspect of this whole mess. Russia has been obsessed with expanding until it achieves defensible borders for centuries. Putin still actually thinks he can restore the former Soviet imperial borders by force – as transparently nutbar a belief as there is.
He is substantially in negative numbers on controlled territory since the start of the latest war in 2022 and has also lost the vast majority of Russian pre-war armored vehicle stocks, half or more of the Black Sea Fleet and, just days ago, a really big chunk of his remaining air assets.
The same series of strikes also inflicted some as yet unknown level of damage on Russia’s nuclear submarine force/construction infrastructure.
I wonder more than a bit if the next big surprise Ukraine springs on Russia – and it seems certain there will be one – is a mauling of its remining ICBM assets on the same scale as that just administered to its strategic bomber fleet.
Spreading of the conflict and it going on much longer are pretty much mutually exclusive propositions. The only place it can really spread is to NATO nations. If Putin is so foolish as to make that happen, it will be Game Over for Russia in a matter of hours.
If the war remains restricted to Ukrainian and Russian territory, it could go on for perhaps another year or two before Russia runs out of its own men and materiel plus whatever levies and equipment/ammunition the DPRK continues to provide. Ukraine continues to get more and more aid from much of Europe and there are now entire French formations – Legionnaires, I fancy – fighting on the ground there under the legal fig-leaf of being unofficial volunteers to the Ukrainian international brigades. We could well see additional such Euro-nation contingents show up.
The Overton Window has been shifting significantly in Ukraine’s favor ever since Feb. 2022. Recent events have, if anything, sped this up. The major shifts in this war have been exclusively Ukrainian initiatives. I see no reason at all to suppose this will not continue to be the case.
Trump! Series Two sure is full of twists.
Are you not entertained?
As Musk often says, “Excitement guaranteed!”
Democrats: Hey y’all, watch this!
Trump: Hold my beer.
Musk: Hold my bong.
I think dumping Isaacman saves Trump a lot of trouble:
Petro is in charge and the word is she will do whatever Trump wants her to do. If he says to scrag Project X she will scrag Project X.
Isaacman had to be convinced.
And unless Congress puts a specific line item in a bill and PASSES that bill – a line item like Hubble’s – then my understanding is that the NASA administrator can end any project. Regardless of how much money NASA is given.
Let me know if that’s not the case.
Congress recesses for the month of August. That gives them a little less than 3 months to interview and confirm a new candidate for NASA administrator…IF Trump nominates one – and does it today. And it gives them 3 months to pass a NASA appropriations bill – FY25 ends on September 30th.
I doubt Congress is that agile. Especially since they have Medicaid, Medicare and Defense budgets to wrangle over.
I expect a CR on September 29th or thereabouts. I expect Petro to still be the interim administrator on October 1. I expect programs to be shut down October 1st.
I expect that the stupid “Beat the Chinese” to the moon impetus, and the interest in getting to Mars to outweigh all of the other projects that could be cut.
I’m glad to see Grace-Roman would be restored to some degree:
$156.6 million versus a projected $376.5 million
I read that Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society says:
“…that the spacecraft is now nearly complete, with most of its overall budget already spent: “Cutting it in half and expecting to save money, that doesn’t make sense.” ”
Perhaps he is forgetting the costs of operating the thing and processing the data. Personally I think we are way too inefficient with operations costs on things like that.
Anyway, that’s my take.
I suspect a lot of the ongoing “operations” expense for long-lived probe and telescope missions is due to keeping the projects staffed up far beyond the minimum needed to caretake once the main mission is accomplished.
Given how long some of the probes take to get where they’re going, I even question the need to keep many of the science staffers twiddling their thumbs during long transits. They should work on other projects in the interim and return to the probe once it arrives at its destination and starts doing serious science. That would get us more probes doing more science with lower headcounts.
“I suspect a lot of the ongoing “operations” expense for long-lived probe and telescope missions is due to keeping the projects staffed up far beyond the minimum needed to caretake once the main mission is accomplished.”
Agreed. That plus old FTE-heavy methodologies. Chandra, for example, has 100-200 people operating the scope on a day to day basis. Health, safety, observing scheduling, software maintenance, data processing…..stuff like that. We are in a new era of command, control and automation and that hasn’t made it’s way into operations as far as I can tell.
Agreed.
These are two men who have seen each other in person almost every day for six months. They don’t need to argue on Twitter or in public at all, they had and have plenty of opportunity to do so in private. This is for show, kayfabe.
Could be. Some of the things said do signal that. People are taking these statements as serious rather than too over the top to be real.
There are a lot of really smart people who think everyone are idiots and that creates irrational blindspots that prevent them from observing reality. Turns out they are just like all us other humans.
“Cui bono?” Also, was the Trump-Musk phone call before or after the Epstein tweet?
The establishment.
Trump is now a full member of the stupid party.
All these comments on the subject of the post, and not one reference to the fact that the last two posts here are blockquotes with all the HTML formatting and x inlining tags visible? Am I the only one affected?
Sorry, you’re right. That’s what I get for updating WordPress, I guess. I’ll see if I can fix it.
No, you’re not. The entire Web is pretty much held together with chewing gum and duct tape. Anything electronic and digital – especially if it’s portable – is increasingly a random behavior generator. I get episodic weirdness at most of the sites I frequent on an ongoing basis. There is a legion of Millennial and Zoomer coders out there who seem never to have crossed paths with the concept of regression testing.
Only in the digital realm do you find design engineers eager to always exchange the positions of the clutch and brake pedals with each new version.*
*For those of us old enough to remember what a clutch pedal does.
Bingo.
Whadaya bet they bring back the clutch pedal by creating the CVT Clutch?
They’re also rather hazy on the concept of “inputs validation” and “error checking”, they think a “try-catch” block is all you need.
I sometimes had to put a try-catch block so my bosses would see it here, then put the real error trap link in the Finally. As for input validation, it took my breath away the first time I heard some manager say, “Won’t Windows catch that?”
Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump and a vocal critic of Elon Musk, urged Trump to retaliate against the SpaceX leader by targeting his business.
Bannon said on his “War Room Live” show Thursday that Trump should sign an executive order to use the Korean War-era national security mobilization law called the Defense Production Act to take control of SpaceX. “The U.S. government should seize it,” Bannon said. He said the administration also should strip Musk of his security clearance and suspend all federal contracts to Musk’s companies pending an investigation.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-elon-musk-feud/card/steve-bannon-urges-trump-to-seize-spacex-and-deport-elon-musk-7GV6PBKSIhqveB3VeYKX?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAhmOaunyCFJ4EirR21_erLThe_GCCfVtpYTjJd-hkk46ainVp9EHxBS_aogxm0%3D&gaa_ts=6845735a&gaa_sig=PWgYLHzI3s5DmSTE94ia8RdjeMkwAK8r_R_6iC2XT6ZdJaJX_9yn7reXev1Zlyo4-WYeoT_Ay5W1VoKVSiZLBw%3D%3D
Hopefully Trump won’t listen to this kook bat…the government taking over Space-X would be a disaster as well as “deporting” Elon Musk.
Stupid is as stupid does…
Bannon is a major league crank with bush league influence.
Bannon has been jealous of Musk since before the election. I thought Trump had decided to help him through his legal issues, but otherwise sideline Bannon, until Trump appointed Bongino to the deputy FBI position. Bongino and Bannon are pals, although Bongino doesn’t sound as batshit crazy as Bannon.
I have a bit of a problem with an NBC article that claims to have interviewed Trump. It is NBC, so not worth too much, but they claim to have asked Trump about Musk funding Democrat candidates in upcoming elections. Trump said if Musk did, that Musk “would have to pay a high price”, in referring to some sort of punishment. If that’s true, Trump is showing a lack of respect for free speech that pisses me off and would surely piss off Musk, who put his money into restoring as much free speech as possible.
Well, that comment by Trump was (not atypically) stupid, because I’ve seen no evidence that Elon plans to support Democrats in upcoming elections. All he said was that he was less inclined to support Republicans. He knows that despite the feud with Trump, Democrats are still antithetical to his beliefs, and hate him.
Yes. Musk supporting the party of low-wattage narcissists and megalomaniacs would be at least as self-destructive as
Trump actually cancelling SpaceX’s contracts.
If Musk wants to continue as a political figure I have a few suggestions for him.
First, he could gin up an organization to find and support candidates for local offices like school boards and the myriad water districts, community college boards and other such entities that we have here in CA and, I suspect, most other states. Dems, backed by public employee union money, pretty much monopolize such offices at the moment.
Second, support a national movement to make public employee unions illegal again as they were before the Kennedy administration – first-responders excepted.
Third, throw in with Vivek Ramaswamy on trying to radically revamp Social Security – something Trump has pre-emptively wimped out on even attempting. Vivek’s recent notions very much resemble an idea I had about a decade ago for replacing tax-based Social Security with a system tied to the health and expansion of the national economy. I would call it the United States Sovereign Market Index Mutual Fund – the good ship USS MIMF. Vivek wants to start with a $10,000 equity grant to every U.S. citizen at birth starting next year. I would like to see it treated as a trust fund that can’t be tapped or borrowed against until retirement. Unlike the current Social Security system, the account assets should be actual property of its beneficiaries and be heritable.
That hardly exhausts the universe of possibilities for more nation-saving on Musk’s part but it’s a decent start on a list.
No politician sees a bright shiny pile and can resist keeping their hands off.
I’m truly amazed Roth IRAs have lasted as long as they have…
Life insurance benefits as well. Although the insurance industry is better connected politically.
‘Cut It Out’ – Elon Musk’s Dad Sides With Trump In Bitter Feud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFVErRONjic
Not sure how much influence the elder Musk has on his son…I understand they have a “complicated” relationship…
Based on various accounts over the years, Musk and his dad are “estranged.” That’s a fancy way of saying they cordially detest one another. Musk, if even half the stories are true, would seem to have excellent grounds for detesting his old man. A lamentably significant fraction of “parental units” are simply lousy at the practice of parenting.
“Unlike the current Social Security system, the account assets should be actual property of its beneficiaries and be heritable.”
Sounds like Australia’s retirement system. A certain percentage of your pay from your employer goes into a fund which you own, is managed by fund managers, but you cannot access until reaching retirement age.
It is also possible to set up an SMSF (Self Managed Superannuation Fund) commonly used by small business people and farmers. Contributions to the superannuation funds (all types) are taxed at 15% instead of the higher marginal tax rates, fund earnings are taxed at 15% but when retired the fund pension and/or lump sum payouts are tax free and sequestered from any working income you may still make which is taxed at normal rates.
That does sound a lot like what Ramaswamy and I have spitballed – though hardly at the same level of influence. I didn’t know that about Oz but it’s good to know there is something that constitutes a substantial existence proof that this sort of thing can work.
What with gun bans and a Covid Reich more repressive than even ours, I haven’t been much of a fan of Aussie politics in awhile but it sounds as though you guys have gotten at least one big thing right.
The reason the Trump adminstration is cutting university research funding instead of reforming Social Security is that the Democrats aren’t running ads of an actor pretending to be a Republican Speaker of the House tipping an assistant professor out of an office chair off a cliff.
“Bannon is a major league crank with bush league influence.”
This. He also needs a decent shave.
Imagine trying to seize SpaceX. “Hello, Vladimir Vladimirovich, maaate, how would you like a REAL space program”
It appears clear that – from Eric Berger to the NYT – it was the yanking of Isaacson that turned what Elon been planning as a “quiet” exit from the WH into something that he felt had become humiliating.
He was only told of the planned yank minutes before he walked into the Oval Office for that little farewell ceremony. It seems that after that he tried to persuade Trump that it would be good to hire [talented] people of all stripes. Incredibly, Trump had really not known before this that Jared had contributed to people running under both parties. And that was now unacceptable though both Trump and Musk have done so, and that Jared is now a registered Republican in PA who supports Trump policies.
I watched an interview with Isaacman where he said that all of his donations were known in advance. He did allude to some possible issues with an advisor but also that he didn’t really know what happened.
The interview was a great example of how to act when things don’t go your way. He wasn’t going to burn any bridges and genuinely seemed to be in agreement with Trump’s agenda.
Trump has a lot of former Democrats in his administration and Isaacman gave money to the Trump campaign too.
I don’t think we know what happened and also shouldn’t trust left wing media, who have a track record of pushing carefully crafted deceits for their own agenda.
One thing this has done is unmask a number of foreign-born influencers and “government officials” who should be denaturalized and deported. That alongside a number of US born bureaucrats who need to be put before grand juries. And get Musk back to work at his companies and out of the limelight, if anyone can convince him to sftu.
I heard that he is lying low right now.
“just a bunch of people, um, having fun watching cars burn”
https://x.com/APTeacher1754/status/1931890142911811620
Life on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket has been disrupted after migrant workers were shackled and boarded onto Coast Guard boats, igniting fear among undocumented workers who form the backbone of the islands’ workforce.
https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1931753089880469764
Dick Eagleson, if you want more details of Australia’s retirement scheme, Rand has my permission to give you my email address.
Evidently Musk is mellowing out on this conflict. On X:
“I regret some of my posts about president @realDonaldTrump last week. They went to far.”
Good. I cut the guy some slack since, as Churchill once said, “Instability is the handmaiden of genius.”. And politics can be frustrating.
Which is why he ought to stay out of it.
Sorry for the bold print..I intended that only for the word “regret”.